Cover Letter for ePortfolio

Dear portfolio reader

I am taking Professor Lucenko’s WRT 102 this semester, and I learned a lot from her lessons and reading material she provided for us students. I am a international student and just transferred from China last semester in which I took WRT 101 class. I got an A in that class, so I thought this semester I could do as well as I did in last semester.  Things did not go the same direction as I assumed. I faced a lot of difficulties such as many grammar errors, logic fallacies and work cited problems, all of which lowered my grade. However, I did not give in to these difficulties. Under the instruction of the professor, I gradually made progress.

When I was in China’s university, I have never been asked for writing a rhetorical analysis. It was a completely new kind of essay for me when I got to know it at WRT 101 class. Since the requirements of WRT 101 were lower in like the numbers of pages and tolerance for undeveloped argument, it is not so hard to finish a good rhetorical essay. However, the requirements in WRT102 reaches higher level, I cannot handle it easily. Besides trying to absorb everything the professor taught in class, I surf on Internet to find necessary examples of rhetorical techniques such as consideration for intended audience, language of article, attempt to fill interest gap, knowledge gap and etc. to help me understand them. After understanding these techniques, I did really detailed analysis for every reading material based on some simple rhetorical techniques that I learned from WRT 101 and these sophisticated techniques taught in WRT 102. Not until I had a full understanding about how these rhetorical techniques work in reading material, did I started to work on my essay. I am happy that through WRT 102 class, I learned a new thing.

Understanding what I am going to write is the first step. The second step is to integrate all my analysis together and form a complete essay. I will take my comparative paper as the example. Teacher provides us two ways of organizing the essay which are block style and point to point style. I chose the later one, because I thought it was better to make my argument clear. I organized every body paragraph in a same way. Firstly, I declared what the similarities or differences of the two articles. For example, I argued, “Both articles adopt comparison and contrast to arouse readers’ interests.” I explained how comparison and contrast help to stir readers’ interests and took out evidences from both articles to present readers my thinking process.

Trough all the semester, I can recognize my improvements: less grammar mistakes, less logical fallacies, and more solid argument. I will not just stop here. I am going to strive for better writing skills. Although my major is economics which does not require excellent skills, I love writing something to express myself even without a reader.

Sincerely

Nanjun Wang

Revision Progress

My revision is going well so far. I mainly use professor’s review and peer review to revise my essay. I fixed many mistakes like typo, grammar mistakes and logic fallacies. When I finish these fixations, I take out peer review worksheet to figure out whether my essay fulfill the requirements. If it did not, I would make further revisions. Thus, the article becomes more and more readable. The most troubling thing for me is adding citation. I forgot to cite sources in the first draft,and I also did not record all sources I used, so it is hard to find out every source. But I am trying my best to do it.

Research Paper Progress

Before I started my argument, I did a lot  such as outlined my sub-thesis and  finding peer review journals or news for each one, but I only have a sketchy plan for my research paper. Especially I did not fully develop my logic. Thus when I finished my paper, I found that there were numerous flaws in my argument, and even the title was not suitable enough. Because during the process, I did not  organize my words and linked them in a logical way. I just put some related material together. Some material was good, but I failed to use them to illustrate my point, while some were not persuasive at all so I needed to delete them. Because of my carelessness at the beginning, I have to make great endeavor to revise my essay.  I cannot have a detailed plan in the initial stage, which is the most challenging thing.

Resource Annotation

“10 Facts about Zoos” Captive Animals Protection Society. 3 Mar. 2010. Web. 09 Apr. 2014.

Summary: The article makes a list of ten facts about how animals live in zoos. For example, zoos cannot provide sufficient space; they die prematurely in zoos; they connect to animal circuses. Each part is very short, but it provides rather full information about animals’ current situation.The purpose of the article is to claim that it is miserable for animals to live in zoos and further persuade readers to focus on the issue and protect animals. It gives several examples for each fact.

Usage: From this article, I gain an overview about several bad things that animals experience. I can pick several facts as my subthesis of animals’ suffering in zoos. Since the article have already provided short examples, I can find more details about these examples and use them to illustrate my points.

Research Proposal

1. Introduction: Almost all of us once visited zoos where we could appreciate performances of animals or fed on them for fun. As our own perspective, those animals seems to be happy about being treated like this. If we are truly clear of their feelings? Are they willing to always stay in the cages rather than living free in the wild? To some extent, zoos indeed provide animals with space, but this space does not mean comfortable living environments. For those lovely animals, the best habitats are where they are supposed to live. Zoos are irrational existence and we should let animals go to places where they belong.
2. Rationale: When I was studying philosophy in Chinese colleges, I met a professor who cared for animals. In his class, he often told students that since animals just like human beings, have feelings, if we do something bad to them, they will sense painful and sorrowful. According to this reason, he does not eat any meat and he even requires his daughter to follow him. I was so touched by his sincerity and persuaded by his argument that I started to reflect what my attitudes toward those animals during my childhood. Have I ever cared about their feelings? Besides, I read some news that some visitors hurt animals for fun, such as throwing stones to them and feeding them on toxic food. When the pictures of an animal lying on the ground with a painful expression, I sense painful too.
3. Research plan: For this research, what I have already known is news telling visitors hurt animals in zoos. And also some analysis paper about the condition of zoos. Most of them illustrate shortcomings for animals, like their gradual loss of ability to compete, visitors’ feed causing animals’ health problems, and badness for the whole ecosystem. I still need to find some concrete examples instead of summary to illustrate these shortcomings. And I have to find solutions for the question. We should just simply close zoos or we can have other substitutes for them. The solution is also worthy of exploring. I will search for experts’ ideas and methods.
4. Implications: As for me, I have been regarding sympathy as one of the most vital features of human beings, so I plan to depend on this research to express my sympathetic feelings to animals. I want to make endeavor to help them to have a better life on Earth. What’s more, I also want to stir my readers to reflect this serious issue and stimulate them to take action to protect animals. For the whole world, nothing is more important than harmony. Only if we treat animals as equal as humans, can we achieve the harmony. As the most intelligent creature, we ought to keep the balance and harmony of the world rather dominating it. Thus, it is more likely for us to reproduce smoothly and keep away from disasters.

 

Source1: Almazan, Ronnel R., et al. “Welfare Evaluations Of Zoo Animals In The Philippines.” Kafkas Universitesi Veteriner Fakultesi Dergisi 17.3 (2011): 409-501. Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 Apr. 2014.

Pro/Con Claims

Topic: animal conservation

Tentative question: Should animals be caged in zoos for people’s visit?

Main argument: We should not send animals into zoos,

Claim 1: It affects genetic diversity.

Most animals in zoos are less likely to mate a better congener, since the couple is assigned by stuff of zoos.

Claim 2: It affects animal’s health.

Some visitors feed animals in wrong way.

Claims 3: It affects the whole ecosystem.

It cut off these animals’ interaction with other creatures and plants, while they altogether form a health ecosystem.

Counterclaim 1: Zoos provide people with much pleasure.

Counterclaim 2: Zoos provides rare animals with habitats.

Counterclaim 3: Stuff in zoos help to increase rare animals’ birth rate.

Topics of Research Paper

“No dealing, no killing” is not a good discipline to conserve rare animals. Having heard the slogan for many times, I have never thought about there will be any problem with it. However, killers seem do not stop slaughtering animals. Newspapers publish reports of slaughter as many as before the slogan appearing. Thus, I start to reflect whether the slogan works well or not. I have already known a few examples to illustrate that the slogan cannot effectively stop the killing. I need to find out more strong examples and experts’ opinions to develop and support my argument. Some may think the slogan is effective. Because if people stop buying the elements of rare animals, the dealers will have no chance to earn profits so eventually they will quit this field. I would like to reach media and experts, because they have great influence on society. If some medias report some new methods with verification of experts, people change their way to conserve rare animals rather than the old and ineffective one.

Another topic I am interested in is that zoo should exist in the world. When I was very young, my parents always took me to some zoos to know animals. Gradually, I liked to visits zoos because by watching animals’ behaviors like foraging and playing together, I felt surprising and delighted. So when someone put forwards that we should not keep zoos, I am not unwilling to support this point of view. As I grow up, I realize that the reason for zoos’ existence is not only for visitors’ delight, but also it is a good place to conserve animals as well. Some argue that zoos also serve to educate people especially children, because children have much contact with zoos and they are more willing to protect things they like. Other people, arguing against the idea, hold that zoos are worse environment than the wild. If animals live in the wild, they will grow better. As for this idea, I will post enough evidence to fight against. I plan to reach zoos’ owner, since they have ability to improve the quality of zoos and arrange funny activities to educate children.

Monsters and Marvels

As I visited the exhibition of “Monster and Marvels”, the most surprising character is Sandra Woosan also called Lady Shiva. This alias comes from an Indian god Shiva who has great power to control reproduction and dissolution. As for as I am concerned, the cartographer might think both of them as women bring their superiority to the full play.

Sandra Woosan takes advantages of her extreme beauty to seduce others and eventually kills them. As we can see from the picture, she wears a dress which presents her chest and legs, enabling us fully sense her sexuality. Furthermore, most of other pictures show viewers her charming face and perfect figure. However, her characteristics give a strong contrast with her appearance. She kills people without any hesitation or sympathy. Viewer may wonder how such a beautiful woman has a cruel heart to assassinate others. This is the common Asian women’s image in Americans during 19^th century when America invaded and occupied Asian，because they were easy to be hooked by Asian women and found themselves being transformed rather than transforming. This vulnerability makes them suspicious of whether Asian women have some magical power.

These stereotypes remain exist. In the movie “Charlie’s Angels”, Asian American Liu Yuling acts as a female agent who is wise and beautiful but is hired by a secret person to kill people. This character looks like Sandra Woosan. Another Asian actress, Yang Ziqiong also acts as an agent in the movie “007: tomorrow never dies”.

In Chinese culture, Japanese are depicted most in China’s movies about Sino Japanese wars. For example, the movie “The Flowers of The war”, most Japanese are demonstrated to be horrible and cruel. They kill a large number of Chinese and use various ways to torch them such as burying them when they are alive and experiencing on them for bacterial wars. When Chinese watch the movie, they tend to be excited and irritated and gradually develop an anti-Japan emotion. The dangerous emotion will lead people to do many irrational things like stopping buying goods imported by Japan and crashing cars of Japanese brands.

Comparative Analysis

The main part of these two articles describes natural and scientific researches. One research in the article “Saving Ethiopia’s ‘Church Forests’” examines the condition of “church forest”, while the other in article “Man Discovers a New Life-Form at a South African Truck stop” verifies a new finding. Both articles use combinations of narrative, description and exposition modes. But the purposes are different. The article “Saving Ethiopia’s ‘Church Forests’” aims at informing readers a research team’s endeavor to save “church forests”. The article “Man discovers a new life-form at a South African Truck Stop” is to tell us a story about a German biologist who discovered a living fossil, but at the end of the article, the author encourages readers to make our own discoveries. This part seems to be a persuasion.

At the first glance, readers may not be familiar with “church forests”. Taking this fact into consideration, the author uses almost five paragraphs to provide readers with necessary background like what does “church forests” mean in Ethiopian Christian, the size, the location and current situations. Thus readers can keep reading without any confusion. However, few technicalities get fully explained in the article “Saving Ethiopia’s ‘Church Forests’”. When it talks about “an order is one of the big categories of life”, the author just simply says “ a big branch on evolution’s tree”. This can be counted as a paraphrase rather than a perfect explanation. We can know the reason by checking where it was posted. Scientific American, a kind of professional website spreading science, post articles to those who have already had some scientific knowledge. Abundant explanation here is unnecessary.

Multimedia which is an important tool in both articles helps readers know better about two researches. But the importance of it is different in these two articles. The article “Saving Ethiopia’s ‘Church Forests’” inserts three videos to account for the process of the research. Even though readers do not have time or patience to finish the whole article, they can have a sketchy understanding of the process. The time of all three videos amounts to only two minutes. In the article “Man discovers a new life-form at a South African truck stop”, we do find some images, but they serves little to explain something to readers. Most of them serve to reduce the boringness of the article.

 

Conclusion of “Conservation Triage” and”What Species will live”

In the article conversation triage, Nijihuis summarizes that making decisions about which species worthy of being saved  is pretty hard before the end, and then says that people have to decide . This senses that he throws a dilemma for people to face. And he advocates the public to bravely face it and pick a choice. However, in the article what species will live, Nijihuis just clearly states the fact that every criteria has its own flaws. And in the last paragraph, he presents some scholars suggestions. Compared with these two conclusions, we can see that the ending of which species will live is more objective than conversation triage’s.